


Egress

by scioscribe



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Genre: Gen, Haunted Theme Park, Implied Ed Exley/Bud White, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Ed Exley vs. the haunted theme park.(Gold stars.  Alone with his dead.)





	Egress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



> Nothing could live up to the glory that was this prompt, but please accept this attempt with best wishes for a happy Halloween.

The park closed up just two months ago, but it had been down-at-the-heels even when Ed’s father had first taken him there. Ed remembered peeling a flake of paint as big as his hand off a wall in the funhouse. Its main selling point was being close enough to the ocean for parents to tire out their kids on rickety rollercoasters and make them logy from the aftermath of burned-off funnel-cake and cotton candy; get Johnny and Joanie sleepy enough for Mom and Dad to have a cuddle or two on the beach in relative quiet. Big Charlie’s Funland. He’d had school friends—well, acquaintances—who didn’t even remember the place. Now, boarded up, with a padlocked chain across the gate, it might become a hangout for dopers or a body-dump for whoever would pick up the reins from Mickey Cohen and Dudley Smith. But that wasn’t why Ed Exley was there.

He was chasing after—his mouth quirked—a delicate resolution to a complex situation, wasn’t that how the commissioner had put it? The bright twenty year-old daughters of California attorney generals were not supposed to go missing, and if they did, no one was supposed to think they could be found spreading their legs on the dusty floors of abandoned skating rinks. But, well. Things often weren’t what they were supposed to be.

“I’m trusting in your discretion,” the commissioner had said.

It was a job for a uniformed officer, nudged up to his rank only because of the people involved. But Ed hadn’t been sleeping well lately anyway. He had no objection to a late-night trip to the closed-up Funland.

He hadn’t taken into consideration the sound his own footsteps would make in the desolation of the place: both too loud and too shuffling, like the rasping of immense dry leaves. It didn’t matter. The park was small and it wouldn’t take long to search it. With all the implications he’d heard in his mind, he checked the roller-rink first, but there was nothing.

Too easy, probably.

Then he came to the shooting gallery. He stopped there, looking. There was something wrong with the shape of the targets: the crisp bulls-eyes he remembered had gone fuzzy at their edges, maybe worn away by the weather. He had—he rubbed his eyes—made the center of one once, hadn’t he? But only after his father had died. He remembered the way the target had popped back up on its little lever. Nothing else in the world died like that.

But now, even if it was just the dark, just the natural wear, they didn’t match his memory.

 _You’re not wearing your glasses_. But no, he was, he wore them all the time now: to hell with anyone who might judge him for it.

There were five targets lined up neatly across the gallery, though there should have been six—one had fallen down sometime after the park’s closing and was now missing in the middle of the row like a knocked-out tooth. Five targets still standing. And in the dim gray moonlight, the furze of stars and clouds and light pollution, they looked almost like faces.

 _Now, boyo_ , something whispered. _Don’t be shy about the evidence of your own two eyes, Edmund. Tell the truth and shame the devil.  
_

They _were_ faces—not painted, but done in pen with thick globs of black ink, as savage and savagely recognizable as any caricatures anywhere.

Dick Stensland. Susan Lefferts. Bud White. Pierce Patchett. Jack Vincennes.

“That’s wrong,” he said into the darkness. His voice was remarkably steady, or so he thought. “I have a postcard from Bud right here in my pocket. He doesn’t belong.”

The middle target looked back at him implacably, as if it knew better. He took the postcard from his pocket and unfolded it, but the light was too dim for him to read by. He didn’t like that the faces were clear but Bud’s scrawl wasn’t.

_Do you carry him close to your heart, Edmund?_

_That’s not relevant,_ Ed thought. _It’s not._

He forced his gaze away from the shooting gallery and walked on, aware that his footsteps were coming faster and faster and then, with a kind of dizzying vertigo, aware that the sound of them was quicker than his own movement. Like his shadow was outpacing him.

“Miss Lyles? Christine Lyles?” Just to drown out the sound. At least there was no godawful echo, his own voice bouncing back to him over and over again. Disconnectedly, he thought of the original Echo calling over and over again for Narcissus, who would not leave his own reflected glory. He wished he could read the postcard again. He couldn’t remember exactly what it said. Wish you were here. Saw you got a second promotion. Something like that.

Everything Bud sent him was either prefab generic or off-the-wall or both. Once, a cut-out advertisement for a lawnmower and nothing else. No wedding invitation, though. Not yet.

_Wish you were here._

“Miss Lyles?” Hell, if she’d run away, if she’d done it for kicks to thumb her nose at her old man, what were the odds she’d come out even if she heard him? That was a relief to think about—if there was no hope for any of this, he could just turn around right now. It was a small park, but she could still avoid him if she wanted to.

Just to the end of the fairway. That was as far as he needed to go. Past the hot dog stands, past the Pitch-Till-U-Win, past the carousel, past the hall of mirrors. No need to branch out any further.

No, actually, he was walking so briskly he’d passed the food stands already. Good for him.

_Moving like you’ve got pepper on your heels, boyo. Anyone who didn’t know better would think you were running from something._

“I can tell you’re not real,” Exley said, his voice tight and pissy. He sounded something other than sane. “He didn’t say ‘boyo’ every other sentence.”

Somehow the answering silence was mocking.

The bottles in the Pitch-Till-U-Win booth were full of booze and covered in smeary fingerprints. All the labels were the same: Dick Stensland’s preferred brand. He knew that like he’d once known Bud White’s, in a different way than he knew Bud’s now: know your enemy, even if they would never have a drink with you. Even if you wouldn’t have one with them. He kept walking. There was nothing strange in a cheap outfit having used leftover beer bottles in one of their games, the only strange thing was that roaming kids and winos hadn’t taken care of the leavings by now. Or maybe they had and all that was left was rainwater.

 _It’ll taste sweet_. That was Lynn, and a nice change from Dudley. _You should try it._

_And what’ll happen if I do?_

He could almost see her shrugging, her white Veronica Lake dress slipping off her shoulders. _The rivers will run backwards. Or maybe you’ll live forever. That’s what everyone wants in this town. Maybe I would even write you._

_You never do. Just Bud._

_Do you think he tells me what he sends to you?_ She sounded genuinely curious. _Do you like to think he doesn’t?_

He reached out, one hand shaking a little at the fingertips, and knocked a bottle over. What poured out onto the ground was colorless in the dark and there was no way of telling what it was. The smell was coppery. No—like honey, like lotus. It had a kaleidoscopic shifting to it and he was to the carousel before he had gotten it out of his nose.

Okay, he was imagining things. He was tired and jumpy in a dark place full of memory and his mind was playing tricks on him.

 _Well, it never would sit still_ , Jack Vincennes said. There was a smile in his voice, very casual. He didn’t seem like he minded being dead.

 _I don’t,_ Jack said. _As a matter of fact, I died laughing. Knowing I’d fucked Dudley Smith was the high point of my life, sorry to say. That’s the kind of screwing you never forget. Go on up and look at the horses, Exley._

“I used to ride on this as a kid,” he said, looking at the carousel. “It was my favorite part of the park.”

_See, I’d have figured you more for a hall of mirrors kind of a guy. Narcissus to the bone._

Ed almost laughed. “No, Jack, that was you.” He almost didn’t mind now that he was talking to himself.

But the smile in Jack’s voice didn’t fade for a second. _Uh-uh, kid. I don’t think so._

He approached the carousel. At this point it didn’t surprise him that all the horses were painted the same, painted like what had once been his favorite. On all the bridles, written in a kind of shimmery gold that caught the moonlight perfectly: _ROLLO TOMASI._ Like dogs wearing collars.

He wondered what would happen if he straddled one of them: just wrapped one hand around a cheaply gilded pole and pulled himself up. He touched the polished flank of the horse closest to him and felt the uncanny warmth of it, the lack of dust. Distantly, he heard calliope music begin. He pulled away like he’d touched a hot stove.

 _I’d have thought you’d ride your truth right to the finish line,_ Jack said. _I sure as hell did._

 _Leave me alone,_ he thought petulantly.

He thought the real Jack would have laughed at that, but of course the real Jack wouldn’t have said anything, wouldn’t have been able to. Instead, he sounded almost kind, but also unyielding, like a doctor telling him he had to roll up his sleeve for the shot. _One more stop on this line, I think._

_And if I turned around now?_

_Don’t_. That was Bud.

“You’re not dead, God damn it. I have your postcard right in my fucking pocket.”

 _Maybe something happened in the meantime,_ Bud said neutrally. _Car crash._

_No. Lynn would have called. Somebody would have told me._

_But you’re seeing her too, aren’t you?_ In the far distance, a spark of a cigarette being lit; a silhouette that was almost visible. _You’ve got her voice in your head just like mine. So maybe. Or else you’ve just got a guilty conscience about one thing or another._

 _Some men get the world,_ Lynn said.

He took the postcard out and held it up again. We regret to inform you—

“That’s not what it says and they wouldn’t put it on a postcard.” That sounded like a snarl, something he hadn’t even known he was capable of. But then again, he’d done a lot, with Bud and without, that he hadn’t known he was capable of. He closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again.

_Ed—Come down south sometime if you want to see the desert. Lynn says fine. As long as you don’t expect me to talk, which I’m still not doing too much of. But if you like the strong, silent type and Hollywood’s not filling its quota, come down.  
_

“There,” he whispered. “That’s all.”

 _That’s one hell of an offer_ , Pierce Patchett said, urbane, amused. _Whatever you desire._

 _He’s too chickenshit,_ Stensland said.

Ed pressed his hands to his temples, the postcard still stiff between his fingers and now cool against the side of his face, and then slowly took them down. Fuck Stensland, who wasn’t like Jack or Susan Lefferts or even Patchett. Stensland had earned his ending, bought and paid for, just as much as Dudley.

He walked on to the hall of mirrors, the last thing on the fairway before Big Charlie’s Funland gave way to chain-link fence and the shit of stray dogs. The wind had chased all the litter up against the fence and it was some comfort to see it there, so perfectly mundane. Cigarette butts and filthy napkins.

_What of it, boyo? Do you look in the mirror at who you’ve become, or do you just call inside for the girl?_

“You know something?” Exley said. “There’s just one thing you and I have in common, aside from big plans. We both know who we are.”

He stepped inside. “Christine Lyles?” Though he no longer expected to find her. Whatever good memories he had of this park, it was no longer a place for the living. Maybe that was why he had been drawn to it in the first place, because to tell the truth and shame the devil, as Dudley would say, this task could have been farmed out to someone else. But with Bud and Lynn in Arizona, his dead were his only real company, the only voices he knew well enough to imagine.

He walked through the maze looking for her and didn’t make direct eye contact with his own reflection until the very end, as he was ready to head back outside. He had been in the park longer than he thought—already the mirrors were endlessly reflecting the pink beginnings of sunrise.

So his reflection, when he finally looked, was drenched in a pink so deep it might as well have been red, might as well have been blood, but that was no surprise. Nothing he saw there was. He looked at himself for a long time.

_Do you like what you see, Edmund?_

Exley said, “I can live with it,” and silence washed in with a new kind of barrenness. And a new kind of loneliness.

* * *

 

The park held one more surprise, right by the gate, by the infamous skating rink. At long last, a girl.

Though he’d intended to be calm—thought he was calm—relief slammed into him like buckshot. “Miss Lyles, I’m—”

Susan Lefferts smiled at him. Her nose was broken and leaking blood down her mouth and chin. It had soaked into her dress.

She said, “I’m going to look like a movie star. Aren’t I?”

Ed reeled back and tripped, gravel prickling him even through his trousers and jacket. The chalky white of the path was almost luminescent on his hands where he had tried to catch himself. He held them up, palms out, like lanterns to see her by, as if it were only the dawn light that had bloodied her, the way it had bloodied him. But she was gone. There was nothing ahead of him but the exit. This way to the egress.

“Yes,” he said to the emptiness. “Your own mother won’t even recognize you.”

He would have to tell the man tomorrow that his daughter had been nowhere to be found, that she had run further from him than he'd thought.  The place, he would say, was deserted. All night long, nothing but Ed and his ghosts.


End file.
